If you asked most people to define a film as “Christian,” they might mention a list of qualifications such as no swearing or nudity. If Bibles, prayers, or faith conversions are given airtime, Christians might jump up and down a bit.

On the one hand, this seems reasonable. Prayer and spiritual practices are obviously a good thing. The New Testament recounts stories of conversions, lending legitimacy to such narratives.

The recent film The Forge is a perfect example of what modern Americans might consider a “Christian” story. Okay, full confession: I have not actually seen it. But I have seen two other films by the same creators—War Room (which Forge is a spinoff of) being one of them. Plus, I watched the trailer for The Forge, which is enough to be getting on with.

Again, this kind of film, in one sense, seems to honor and promote the gospel message. Furthermore, the vast and often barren landscape of safe content makes it understandable why Christians would jump at anything that their son can watch without needing to purge his soul afterward.

As E. Morgan stated in a recent article:

“When literally everything spat forth from the maw of Hollywood and the Big Five is bloated and oozing with left-wing propaganda, those on the Right, like starving, abused puppies, are quick to snap up the tiniest morsel of anything else they can find. Even if it’s cringe. Even if it’s actually terrible. At least it isn’t pumping liberal orthodoxy into the veins of its audience. At least—maybe—it’s even offering up a right-coded message(!!!). This comes as such a relief that it’s easy to forgive issues of craft and objective quality and start sucking in air like a drowning man. (And no wonder—we’ve been waterboarded in woke sludge for more than a decade.) Bad prose? Poor command of plot and narrative? Thin, unreal characters? Dreadfully amateur cover design? No problem! The bar is that low.”

Why, then, would many historic Christians and current lovers of classic tales hold these kinds of stories cheap? Why did our definition of a “Christian” story change so drastically from what it once was?

I’ve talked a lot about how the Enlightenment changed the arts and how the church’s view of the arts, so I’ll stick to a brief overview here.

Two Bad Words (At Least for Me):

1. Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism was an early 20th-century reactionary movement against the scientific claims of its day. In short, the world put on a lab coat and started bullying everyone, insisting that the church had it wrong for thousands of years and that science had now ascended the throne—so Christians just needed to step aside.

Amazingly, that is precisely what Christians did. After years of being troublemakers, Christians fled the public square, stopped fighting battles, and abandoned their post.

The net result was a reactionary emphasis on the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith, such as prayer, evangelism, and conversion stories. Plus, they concluded that things had to come such a pass that the end of the world was imminent, so there was no use trying.

In fairness, this movement did come out of a sincere desire to uphold the Bible in a hostile age. And, of course, this is a childishly simplistic summary, but if I don’t stop myself, I’ll carry on with this topic far beyond what this article permits.

2. Gnosticism

Fundamentalism led naturally and directly to Gnosticism, a belief system that prioritizes spiritual practices above the material world.

Unfortunately, the material world included the arts, which were now distrusted. Only the “facts” mattered, but Christians were free to do what they liked with their guitars, candles, and navel-gazing on their own time.

And again, shockingly, Christians—who once dominated the arts—cheerfully accepted these terms.

The result? The arts were given over to the dogs and all the nasty people in Hollywood. And it only went downhill from there.

This led to the massive divide we see today between “Christian” and “non-Christian” art (whereas it used to be that if it was simply *good* art, it was Christian).

A Specific Example

I recently wrote an article referencing Snow White—the original fairy tale, not the Disney version. After publishing it, out of curiosity, I decided to watch the Disney version.

A few points are worth noting:

First, if mainstream evangelicals were to judge the movie based on the list of qualifications mentioned above, they might loosely call it “Christian” (albeit as a mere accidental sign of the times).

There is no naughtiness in the movie, and Snow even prays before bed one night. Granted, there are no dramatic conversion stories, and no one was formerly addicted to heroin—but it was made in the 1940s, so that must be its excuse.

That said, Snow White contains many (probably unconscious) Christian elements carried over from Grimm’s version—elements that I fear many modern Christians would never notice at all. I don’t blame them; I didn’t start noticing them myself until recently. As I’ve said in the above-linked Snow White article, we have lost the language of story. We’re the victims here—more on that in my next article.

At this point, someone might say, “But isn’t prayer important? Aren’t conversions important?”

To that, I say—yes. Not only are they important, but they are so important that they shouldn’t be cheaply handled. Spiritual practices should never be clumsily tacked onto a poorly told story. In fact, we actually don’t retain much when we are preached at in a story format.

Here’s what I mean…

Show, Don’t Tell

If you have any experience as a writer or creator, you’ve likely heard the maxim: Show, don’t tell.

For example, compare two possible scenarios in an on-the-spot made-up story about a guy. We’ll call him Jim:

1. In the first, Jim sits down for a cringy breakfast scene at the beginning of a movie, where he info-dumps at the table: “I think Cathy might be up to something suspicious,” says Jim.

2. Contrast this with a second possible scene: Jim notices Cathy leaving the room suspiciously at work. He follows her at a safe distance and watches as she sneaks into her boss’s office.

In the first scene, our brain shuts down, and we might even feel insulted.

But here’s the biggest takeaway: the second scene is more successful because we, as the viewers, are filling in the blanks.

In other words, when storytellers show instead of tell, we become co-creators with them. We are emotionally invested—it suddenly becomes our story.

Which means the story goes much deeper.

If “show, don’t tell” applies to the basic building blocks of storytelling, how much truer is it for bigger life themes?

Stories should be like Trojan horses, with spiritual truths hidden inside. In this way, they sneak past our outer inhibitions and take root in our souls, hardwiring our deeply held assumptions.

Stories are not supposed to clobber us on the head like logical arguments. Instead, as C.S. Lewis put it, they should fix “our internal eye.”

They change and catechize how we see the world—beginning internally.

I’ve had this problem before, but this was originally going to be one article. Now, I am now planning the second part for next week. Alas… that’s why they call me “Novel Noelle.”

In the next post, I want to take a more positive approach—diving deeper into what it looks like when classic stories show.

Stay tuned!

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